Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Breaking the Laws of America and Other Random Shenanigans

So yeah...it's been about a month since I've blogged. What can I say? I've been busy!

Let me see, where do I start?? Well, I guess the beginning would be a good place...

The Asheville/Nashville/Ray Lamontagne/Dave Matthews/Jason Mraz Trip

About 4 weeks ago, I took a Friday off and had a very concerty weekend. C, J, and I went up to Asheville first for the Ray Lamontagne concert. I wish I had blogged about it before, because my memory is a little foggy (heck, my memory gets a little foggy after about 3 minutes). We got to our classy hotel around 3. We got there around 3 (instead of 1ish like I was thinking) because we had slight issues with needing to be fed and not having a working GPS. The nice man at the check in offered us a free jambalaya dinner at 6pm. Really?!? Jambalaya at the Asheville Days Inn??? Ummm....no thanks. I don't think I'd even be a fan of jambalaya in New Orleans, I'm not going to let a Days Inn lobby be my first real jambalaya experience.

We hung out in our room for a little bit. I was able to feast on Sugar Free Red Bull and about 10 Charleston Chew Minis before J accidentally spilled the entire box on the floor. Well...she said it was an accident, but I know how she really felt about those delicious little nuggets of goodness. I tend to be disgusting in many aspects of my life, but I draw the line at eating off of a hotel room floor (well...unless it was mashed potatoes on the hotel room floor...you guys know how I feel about mashed potatoes).

I was just sitting here trying to remember how I got the Sugar Free Red Bull and then it popped into my head. Julie and I ventured out and found a Food Lion! Food Lion is not nearly as fun as a Harris Teeter, but still...it houses Sugar Free Red Bull, so it can't be THAT bad, right?? I vaguely remember singing Ray Lamontagne songs (quite loudly) into one of those beverages in the car. Yes. I made a Sugar Free Red Bull a microphone. Wow...I'm inventive.

We left the hotel room around 6 to go to dinner and when we were almost there, Julie said, "Oh! I forgot the tickets back at the hotel room!"

I thought she was kidding. She was not....not even a little bit. So we went back to the hotel room and decided that we would just get dinner after the concert.

The concert was definitely in my top 5 concerts of my life (and that's saying a lot, since I'm somewhat of a concert whore). We found a lovely place to eat after the concert (mmm...pizza) and went back to the hotel to sleep (mmm...sleep).

The next morning we made our way to meet my mom in Nashville for the Dave Matthews/Jason Mraz concert at Vanderbilt Stadium. We met for lunch at...wait...what was the name of that place??? Oh well...it was really good, that's all I can remember. One of Julie's coworkers met us there, too (it must be nice to have coworkers throughout the country that you can ask for suggestions to delicious places to eat at). After lunch, we went to our "suite". I say "suite" because it technically had two bedrooms...but I don't think anything can actually be considered a suite until it has more than one TV. I did enjoy the fridge/stove/microwave combo, though. That was handy for, well....the stove and microwave didn't really help me out in any way, but the fridge (more specifically, the FREEZER) was super-handy for keeping my vodka cold.

My mom took a nap after lunch and we left for the concert around 6. It said on the tickets that the concert (which was only 8 miles away) started at 6, but we decided that it would be good to skip the traffic and the opening act and make it for Jason Mraz and Dave Matthews. Yeah. Bad idea.

After sitting in traffic and trying to find parking spot, we made it for the very end of Jason Mraz's set. Seriously!?!? We drove to Nashville to MISS who we went to see (okay...went to see other than my mom...we actually went to Nashville to see you, mom)!??!

Oh...and not to forget...this wasn't a small venue...it was in a freaking stadium. Chris was the lucky guy that got to sit next to the drunk douchebag in the pink polo shirt. He (the drunk douchebag, not Chris) kept dancing like a freaking fool and stepping on C's shoes. Chris (being Chris) didn't say anything about how irritating that it was to the guy, he just made faces (see picture). Ahhh...classic C.

About halfway through Dave's set, we decided that we would go get some dinner. Apparently, Nashville is not the place to go when you want to eat at 10pm. We walked the entire strip of Music Row and finally found an Irish Pub that was serving food (or so they said). We were informed once we had been sitting for what seemed like 45 minutes that they were out of almost everything on the menu. My favorite moment was when my mom said, "Okay...just bring me something that you do have."

Julie had a cheeseburger (I think), Chris and I split a club sandwich (with only ham, because they were out of turkey), and my mom had an "Irish Sampler Platter". Seriously...the guy chose a stupid sampler platter as one of the few things they had left on the menu. Poor mom.

After that super-great dinner, we went back to the hotel and slept off our awesome experiences. The next morning, we left pretty early and started the trek back to good ol' Charlotte. We stopped for lunch at Steak n Shake (even THEY are making sliders these days, YAY!!!!) and got back to my house around 6.

Like a fool, I took a quick shower and met Mike, Thomas, and Beth down at the Visualite Theatre to see the Josh Kelley concert. I was so tired of driving at that point that I had to fight back tears as I was making my way downtown. I'm very happy that I went to that concert (it was pretty great), but I really wish that it had happened a week later (you know...so I didn't fall asleep during the concert).

Okay. I was going to write this blog to catch you up on what's happened in the last month, but I'm thinking that Vegas needs to come at another time. Sorry.